THE COMMONALITIES OF PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY IN EUROPE

The acceptance of public policy advocacy and its style are very diverse in the EU. There is no standardized way of engaging in public policy advocacy in Europe. However, there are certain elements of the way European practitioners conduct political business that shape public policy advocacy activity.

Indeed there are some universals of public policy advocacy as activity: building contacts, monitoring and these transcend culture and institutional structures and mores. Generally, culture and institutional strictures dictate the processes, the local ‘rules of the game’ of these public policy advocacy activities: the ways of dealing with public officials and the channels of access. While culture can often act as a restraint and determinant of public policy advocacy activity, other factors, particularly a power base and serving the immediate needs of public officials can make it less significant. While cultures and institutions will always give some local variation to public policy advocacy, there is an increasing confluence in techniques, such as methods of legislative tracking, the use of for-hire public policy advocates and more formalized planning of campaigns.

Fundamental attributes of successful public policy advocacy in Europe

1. Conveying the right message: This refers to the specific information that the group needs to get across to a policy-maker. Sometimes this might be advocacy at other times simply some fact or statistic. The skill is in gauging what is most appropriate to be effective.
2. Delivering the message to the right people: This invloving knowing the key decision-maker(s) and focusing on that person or group. This may not necessarily be the head of a government department or legislator. It may be a middle manager or aide.
3. Presenting the message in the right form: This necessitates knowing how policy makers want information presented or what is the most appropriate way to present it as the time, written or oral, presented by a consultant or the principal of a group.
4. Delivering the message at the right time: This means that the message will be less effective, even lost if it is not delivered at the most crucial time that is needed and when most appropriate during a communication with a public official.
5. The message must be on the right issue: This indicates that even though the first four factors may be present, if the issue is not one capable of being affected by the group because of all sorts of factors such as whether or not it is in the group's general area of public poliocy advocacy, the resources brought to bear, salience of the issue to policy makers and the public etc. success may not b achieved, however, successful the group might be in general and however much effort it puts in public policy advocacy.